1750-1830

Realgar-glass is assumed to have been developed at the Imperial glassworks during the Kangxi period, when production was under the directorship of Kilian Stumpf and his fellow Jesuits, who set up the glassworks for the Emperor in 1696. Moss, Graham, Tsang, in A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 5, Glass, no. 703, refer to a set of ten realgar-glass cups in Denmark that were purchased in Guangzhou and brought back to Europe aboard the Kronprins Christian in 1732 (for the cups illustrated, see Ethnographic Objects in The Royal Danish Kunstkammer 1650-1800, Nationalmuseet, nos. Ebc 71-82, p. 218). Several pieces of realgar-glass were bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the British Museum in 1753 (see JICSBS, Summer 1998, p. 14, fig. 33; and R. Soame Jenyns, Chinese Art. The Minor Arts II, p. 145, no. 81). A realgar-glass waterpot with Yongzheng mark from the Imperial Collection, Beijing, is published by Yang Boda, "A Brief Account of Qing Dynasty Glass," in C. Brown and D. Rabiner, The Robert H. Clague Collection. Chinese Glass of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911, Phoenix Art Museum, 1987, p. 78. For another realgar-glass snuff bottle datable to 1696-1750, see Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 5, Hong Kong, 2005, no. 705.